Honda’s S2000 CR, on the other hand, is happy to find a racetrack, which you’d expect of a sports car, especially one with initials that stand for Club Racer. However, this one wasn’t as happy as we anticipated.

Like the Dodge Viper ACR, the Honda CR is a suspension and aero package conceived to make the car quicker without adding horsepower, albeit at a much more modest level. A few runs up VIR’s climbing esses convinced us that perhaps the downforce-generating aero elements really do work—this was one of the few cars that allowed us to do the series of turns flat out, although it also was endowed with the fourth-lowest horsepower rating.

So why weren’t our lap times quicker? The culprit was brakes. Racing has demonstrated that the S2000’s brake system is first-rate, but the stock brake pads are not, and they faded almost out of existence after just two laps, never to fully revive.